


call me a fool if you like

by howlikeagod



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Beaches, M/M, Space Tourism, how do I even tag this, i spent so long researching exoplanets for this, peter being an eternal font of optimism and SURPRISE it doesn't work out too well for him, the author's own personal love of worldbuilding, uhh sappy fantasizing?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-23 05:19:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10713018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howlikeagod/pseuds/howlikeagod
Summary: Here is another fact: Peter Nureyev has plans for Juno Steel.There is a big, bright, brilliant universe waiting to fill his eye with wonder, and a certain lovestruck thief who cannot wait to guide him through its greatest attractions.Or: five places Peter Nureyev wanted to take Juno Steel





	call me a fool if you like

Here is a fact: Peter Nureyev makes plans.

This is what he does, what he has always done, and what he will, in all likelihood, spend whatever time he has left doing. It is not only a necessity in his particular vocation, but a source of great joy. He’s always had a knack for it, like turning a situation into a backwards jigsaw puzzle—working from the pieces at hand to see what the picture will be.

Here is a related fact: Peter Nureyev does not ask Juno Steel to run away with him on a whim.

Of course it had not been his intention from the moment he walked into the office of a private investigator, only to find said private investigator halfway out the window—although the view was nice enough to make him consider looking a little longer. But the idea of bringing Juno with him once he left Mars behind, that didn’t occur to him at all until the Cameramen, and Juno’s impeccable aim.

 _He’d be handy to have around if an escape turns sticky,_ Nureyev thought, though that came half a moment after an entirely different musing about the strong tendons in Juno’s hands and the deadly edge in his eyes.

In fact, the decision to offer up this partnership, holding his hand out to Juno with one foot out the door and off-world, was not settled until a certain detective took a certain stolen key out of Peter’s pocket. That cinched it.

A train robbery, a misanthropic anthropologist, a few days of torture, a missing eye: all details. Not that they don’t have meaning—the way Juno’s brow furrows when he turns his head every now and then, like he’s almost managed to forget, that’s hardly nothing—but it has only led them back to where Peter spent months hoping they’d end up.

Standing in the doorway, the whole wide galaxy glittering on the other side; Peter, reaching for Juno’s hand; Juno, reaching back.

_“I want to leave. With you.”_

Here is another fact: Peter Nureyev has plans for Juno Steel.

There is a big, bright, brilliant universe waiting to fill his eye with wonder, and a certain lovestruck thief who cannot wait to guide him through its greatest attractions. Peter would never tell (unless Juno asked, he’d tell him anything if he asked), but he has spent a number of nights over the past few months fading into sleep with these plans on his mind.

He does the same, now, with Juno in his arms and a confession fresh from his lips. The morning will be worth waking up to, Peter knows.

 

—

 

There is a dance hall on Io six miles under the surface, inside the living rock carved out by deep volcanic activity over the course of millennia. The owners of the Magma Ballroom are a wealthy couple who owe Nureyev a favor—or, rather, they are under the impression they owe Basil Jun a favor; with any luck, they haven’t yet noticed half their jewels are missing.

In Peter’s plans, he takes Juno there. In Peter’s fantasies, it goes something like this:

He and Juno are comfortably set up in one of the nicer guest suites, courtesy of their gracious hostesses. Juno steps out of the bathroom. Steam from the shower curls around his bare feet, and he looks Nureyev up and down.

“Is that a dress or one of the hand towels?” he asks, wry and amused—but with a hint of want, a spark of interest that sends heat creeping up Peter’s neck. As for Juno himself, he’s not yet dressed. One of the actual towels hangs from his hips. It bares little more skin than Peter’s plunging neckline.

“The dance hall is lit by natural magma flow, Juno,” he responds, moving into Juno’s space.  “Lovely ambiance, sets the mood incredibly, but it does tend to get _hot.”_

Juno swallows visibly, Adam’s apple bobbing beneath the warm, clean skin of his throat.

“That right?” He asks. Peter hums quietly and leans closer. Juno tilts his head up, his eye flutters closed, and his hands find their way to Peter’s waist.

These are the kinds of kisses that dominate Peter’s daydreams: casual, intimate, no looming threat or sudden salvation from the jaws of death. Just Juno, leaning into him, quiet noises in his throat and a forgotten towel sliding to the floor.

“You ought to get dressed too,” Peter murmurs into Juno’s neck. “We can kiss whenever we like, love, but our hospitable welcome here has an expiration date.”

“Would that be the day they figure out you robbed them blind?” Juno teases.

“Oh, they rarely check that vault at all. Another week, at least.”

“At least?” Juno raises an eyebrow. Peter grins back, enough teeth to draw his attention.

“Well,” Peter grabs him around the waist and leads him toward the bed, where Juno’s own dress is laid out, stepping in time to an imaginary symphony, “long enough for tonight’s dance, at any rate.”

The scene shifts, as fantasies do, and they are twirling in the middle of a wide space. Music falls around them like rain—Peter has seen the blueprints, knows parts of this cavern were shaved away to allow for perfect acoustics. The hem of Juno’s dress, sleek and silver with a long slit up the side, brushes his ankles as they move.

Juno is not a fantastic dancer, even in Peter’s head, but they’re close enough together that it hardly matters. Juno’s chest is pressed to his. Juno’s breath tickles Peter’s neck when he lays his head there. Juno’s body is a center of gentle warmth in the heat of the ballroom.

The dress Juno wears leaves one shoulder exposed. The unique lighting, red and orange and white-hot in turns, brings out the deep tones of Juno’s skin and emphasizes the dip in his collarbone. Peter drops a kiss there.

“Make sure you’re taking in the view, Juno dear,” Peter whispers in his ear. “This is one of the premier destinations in the solar system for the elite and powerful.”

“Oh, is that why it’s so stuffy in here?”

Peter giggles and pulls Juno closer, one hand on the small of his back.

“I mean it,” Juno continues, raising his head to look Peter in the eye. There’s a twinkle there, an implication. “I think I need some air.”

The next part changes from time to time, but certain beats are more common than others. Namely, Juno leaves his dress on. He doesn’t even bother to kick off his shoes before he falls to his knees, Nureyev perched on the edge of the bed.

One of Peter’s hands is buried in Juno’s thick hair, where Juno himself put it. The other clutches Juno’s hand, white-knuckled and flexing to a maddening rhythm.

Out the window, Peter sees dark rock sliced by veins of magma, hot and bright and red red _red._

 

—

 

“You know I can’t swim, right?” Juno sounds something close to nervous as Nureyev pulls him along the dim path. There are rows of lights denoting where it begins and ends, but with the close foliage he can’t see Juno’s face.

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Peter replies.

They come to the end of the treeline and a long stretch of open sand reveals itself. A distance away, where the shoreline ends, waves sparkle like a billion diamonds in the half-light. Juno freezes at the sight, blinking his eye a handful of times.

Peter slips behind him and puts his lips to Juno’s ear. “The Erebus Sea is entirely liquid mercury. Quite a sight, hm?”

“Huh,” Juno breathes, a small laugh the closest he gets to an expression of wonder. Peter has learned to take that for what it is. Juno glances down and kicks at the sand with the toe of his shoe.

“Apatite crystal,” Peter explains. “That’s what gives this beach its distinctive blue color. In the right light, it shimmers as bright as the sea.”

Juno smiles, a small but indulgent thing.

“Are we waiting for the sunrise?”

“Not quite, detective.” Peter spreads the beach towel Juno had made fun of him for bringing out on the sand. He lays down on it, propping his head up on one hand and patting the space beside him with a comically raised eyebrow.

He likes hearing Juno laugh. It’s one of his favorite sounds to imagine.

Juno takes the offered space and cuddles up next to Nureyev. They look out over the shining sand and the shining sea and Peter continues his lecture on the unique attributes of the planet Erebus in the Outer Rim.

“The planet is tidally locked,” he says. “This beach is in eternal twilight. What we’re waiting for, darling, is the clouds.”

Just as he says this, because it is a fantasy and Peter is a romantic, the clouds begin to part and reveal the sun, half-risen and half-sunk over the silver horizon.

A quiet _“Oh”_ escapes Juno as the sand begins to glimmer. Peter has seen this sight before, so instead he watches Juno’s eye widen and his lips part.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Peter prompts. Something in him glows brighter than the sand and the sun and the sea all put together when Juno nods.

Peter kisses him slow and deep as the light brightens and dims with the passing cloud cover. The blanket is soon rumpled and useless, but so are the long pants Juno insisted on wearing to the beach.

Peter gets sand in inconvenient places, but it’s well worth it to see the sparkle caught in Juno’s hair.

 

—

  


The flight to Hubble Station-1103, more colloquially called the Hub, is usually a relaxing and pleasant time. The vessels that go there specifically tend to be the kind with deep-cushioned seats and multiple options for in-flight entertainment, the kind where first class is an assumption.

Peter does not take Juno on one of those flights.

Instead, Cephus and Selene Astor are on the roster for a passenger-slash-cargo ship set to dock in gate Σ-802. Their original layover was supposed to be three hours, at which time they would step aboard a connecting flight to Dione. Through some trick of the cosmos only God and Peter Nureyev could have known, a fatefully-timed scheduling error has them stranded— _stranded!—_ on the Hub for almost forty-eight.

A puff-chested complaint about their accommodations and Cephus’ husband’s delicate digestion has gotten them a discounted— _strike that, sir, my apologies,_ entirely free of charge—hotel room and a fistful of the better restaurant waivers.

“Why am I always the one with indigestion?” Juno grumbles. He is holding Peter’s hand, tight but casual.

“Because you make that face, darling. Like you’re in extreme gastrointestinal discomfort?” Peter grins at Juno’s scowl. “Yes, see, that’s the one!”

Juno opens his mouth to argue, snap back with something petty or witty or plain childish—endearing in all respects, of course—but catches Peter’s eye. The corner of his mouth twitches.

Peter bursts into muffled, snorting giggles and Juno forces his face into a pout to keep from joining him.

He pulls Juno’s hand to his mouth and brushes a kiss across his knuckles.

“It’ll be worth the minor embarrassment, I promise.”

 _“‘Minor,’”_ Juno mumbles. “You know, Nurey—”

Peter swoops in close and kisses Juno, pressing him back against the headrest of his seat.

“Sorry, what was that, Selene my darling?” He says the pseudonym and endearment fast, all one word: _Selenemydarling._ He flashes his teeth, a reminder and an apology.

Juno huffs. He’s terrible at aliases; Juno Steel can never be anyone but himself, and he expects that same honesty from the people around him. Perhaps that’s why he’s so perpetually disappointed.

But just by being with him, for the first time in so long remembering leaves him almost dizzy, Peter Nureyev has no one he’d rather be than Peter Nureyev.

They dock on time. The announcements repeat in Sol Common, Arabic, Trappist, and Centauri: arrivals and departures and delays, a network of interwoven lives all passing each other in the night.

“So where’s the party, Nur—” Juno catches himself. _“Cephus?_ This just looks like another spaceport. A… really big spaceport.”

Juno’s head slowly tilts back as they exit the gate, trying and failing to find the ceiling above them. Levels and levels stacked and spiraling upwards line the sides of the satellite port. It’s loud like all spaceports are loud, but there’s something else thrumming in this one.

A vendor with a magnificent mustache hawks curlicued meat on a stick five feet away; three children with identical Saturnalian hair ribbons play tag in a brightly-colored, soft-matted space; two women, one in a deep orange sari and the other in a pilot’s uniform, swing joined hands together as they walk.

“The Hub,” Nureyev says with a grand, sweeping gesture outward. “Central point of travel between three star systems, the largest pan-galactic spaceport ever built before the War, and a _mosaic_ of cultural connection.”

The list of where Peter takes Juno is never static; every time he thinks about it, a new restaurant or out-of-the-way gift shop or bit of entertainment comes to mind. He hands Juno a tub of colored lip balm made from the wax of real bees, from Earth. He spoon feeds him shaved ice collected from ten-mile-deep glaciers on Eris. The Hub is the only place in the galaxy one can get authentic shakshouka in direct view of a demonstration of traditional Neptunian folk dance.

Their waiter is a young individual with an accent Nureyev immediately clocks as being from Proxima. He orders in easy Centauri, which melts their server’s face into an expression of delighted surprise.

Juno stares at him, contemplative, after the waiter walks away.

“See something you like?” Peter asks, taking a long sip of wine. Juno shakes his head fondly.

“Never really thought about it before,” he says slowly, “but you must carry a whole lot of languages in those pockets to galavant around the galaxy like you do.”

“Hmm, my pockets have very little to do with it,” he smiles. “But yes, my work has demanded I become something of a polyglot.” Peter is showing off, and Juno knows it, but that makes it all more of a game. Not a game he usually plays, as it requires an honesty he’s unaccustomed to—there it is again, bare selfhood.

“Say something.” Juno leans forward on his elbows.

“I just did,” Peter responds. He raises one eyebrow and puts his glass to his lips. Juno’s eye narrows.

“You know what I mean.”

“Why, Juno, I can’t play this game if I don’t know what languages _you_ already speak. I might just tell you the weather in Moscow, thinking it’s sexy and mysterious, but you understood every word and now we’re both disappointed.”

“Sol Common, Martian, and I took two years of Trappist in high school but it didn’t stick,” Juno says dismissively. “Say something.”

 _“You really are a stubborn ass, sometimes,”_ Nureyev declares in clipped tones. Juno squints.

“That’s… That’s a dialect of Sol. Saturnalian?”

“Close!” Nureyev grins. “They do things a bit differently on Titan. Faster, cleaner, you know.”

Juno nods. “Hit me again.”

Peter is hardly one to refuse an invitation like that.

They go back and forth, snippets like _“your eye is very beautiful,”_ and _“I want to hold you down and bite marks into your neck,”_ but also _“the dog is brown,”_ and _“where is the bathroom?”_ Peter’s fluency is not equal in all tongues with which he is familiar.

Juno guesses wrong more than he guesses right, or even close, but that doesn’t matter. Mercurian, Xena, Mandarin, Cancri—Peter tosses endearments and observations across the small table and each one has Juno’s full attention.

When he feels the game wind down, dancers from Neptune long since finished and Proximan waiter given a generous tip, Peter takes Juno’s hand.

 _“I love you,”_ he whispers in Brahmese. Juno may not recognize the language, but he knows Peter. He knows when things have meaning, knows when a secret and a truth come out intertwined.

“Come on, Mister Astor,” Juno says, standing. He does not let go of Peter’s hand. “We have a free hotel room to find. Maybe once we get there you can tell me more about the dogs you’ve seen on Venus.”

Peter laughs.

“I knew you’d recognize a cognate or two, but I couldn’t resist.” He stands with Juno. “Mister Astor, I think that’s a lovely idea.”

It’s a bit of a walk to the hotel, up five levels, but there’s a quiet peace in watching stands and stores close down for the night as others just begin to open. They have the next day yet to see more of the Hub, and tonight they have each other. Peter smiles; there are a great many possibilities for a tongue and the knowledge of how to use it.

 

—

 

When humanity spread to the stars, Earth had room to breathe again.

That’s the poetic way of putting it, anyway. More plainly, the people who stayed on—or returned to, or simply cared enough about—the original homeplanet took all the progress that let them colonize places a hundred light years away and used it to clean up the mess they’d made getting there.

Earth is green. Earth is thriving. Earth is enormous, manifold, and overwhelmingly _alive._

If you don’t walk further than the average span of a radiation shield, most Terran centers of population look a lot like any terraformed asteroid. But there are things you cannot find on most planets, even the ones luckily situated in some star’s habitable zone.

Peter takes Juno to the ocean.

The sun is warm and the water throws swimming patterns of light across their faces. Juno squints grumpily until Peter pulls a pair of novelty sunglasses out of his pocket. They’re shaped like pineapples, plastic green stem leaves tall enough to reach Juno’s hairline.

He refuses to wear them until Peter punches out the right lens. Something about that, a pair of ridiculous sunglasses obviously stolen from a kiosk and now utterly useless to everyone except the cranky lady with the eyepatch, strikes him as hilarious. Juno keeps a stony expression whenever anyone talks to him for the rest of the afternoon, daring them to laugh.

“The Great Barrier Reef,” announces their tour guide, a tall, dark-skinned man in a starch white hat. “Once threatened with destruction, it has been able to grow back over the course of the last few centuries and is now one of the largest known living structures in the galaxy—”

“What?” Juno whispers. “That just looks like a pile of rocks. Pretty ones, if that’s your thing, but rocks aren’t _alive.”_ He glances nervously out the wide window of their submersible tour boat, toward the vibrant green and purple walls of coral. “Uh, are they?”

Peter shushes him. “There will be time to ask our guide questions—or start fights, if you like—at the _end of the tour.”_

A school of silver fish swarms past them suddenly. Juno jumps and lets out a startled _“Ah!”_

Peter laughs.

Juno crosses his arms, petulant. “I don’t know if I like Earth very much.”  
  
“Give it time.”

In the face of all available evidence and testimony, Juno categorically refuses to believe coral is an animal. He does, however, accompany Peter on a lovely dinner while the sun sets. He also follows him down a short rocky incline to the beach with minimal complaining.

The moon—just the one, Luna, singular and original—is high in the sky. Peter leads Juno by the hand around an outcropping and into a half-shell of rock, worn smooth by the passage of time and endless, lapping waves.

Juno stares out over the ocean. The horizon meets the sky and blends; they might as well be looking out into space itself.

“That’s…” Juno takes a breath. “That’s a lot of water.”

Peter chuckles. “I suppose it is.”

“No, I mean—” Juno’s hand twitches like he wants to reach out, reach for the horizon he cannot see. “You don’t get a lot of that on Mars. Enough to survive, maybe, to make your coffee and take a shower every now and then, but…”

“But the abundance,” Peter finishes for him. “You’re not used to that.” _In any sense,_ he thinks. _I can change that, if you’ll let me._

“Yeah.” Juno sighs.

Peter trails a hand through Juno’s hair and down his neck. He shivers pleasantly and leans into the touch, but Peter is already pulling away. He strips off his shirt and is already working on his pants when Juno makes a noise of confusion.

Peter drops his pants, winks, and extends one leg over the dark pool of water. Juno’s face moves from confusion to surprise, and Peter steps in.

“Nureyev—!” Juno exclaims, then he’s cut off.

The seawater is cooler than the air, but not unpleasantly so. It closes over Peter’s head and he squeezes his eyes shut. A short count— _one… two…_

He resurfaces.

“—the hell are you doing? Goddammit, I thought you were going to drown.” Juno is scowling, the moonlight painting his jaw like a thing divine, a goddess if he’s ever seen one and _oh_ but Peter is suddenly breathless.

“I’ll certainly make sure not to,” Peter replies as he stands up fully—the water barely reaches his chest, “if you’ll come in and join me.”

Juno glances toward the endless ocean, then back to Peter. He bites his lip.

“I’ll keep you safe, Juno,” Peter whispers. There are no sounds but the quiet, rhythmic splash of water on rock to hide his words. “Come here.”

Juno rubs nervously at his neck, then reaches for his shirt buttons.

A look of intense suspicion crosses his face when he sticks one foot in the water. Peter holds out his hands to help Juno down the rest of the way; he’s far too apprehensive to jump in like Peter did.

“Huh,” Juno says once his feet are on the sandy ocean floor. “This… is actually kind of nice.”

“I’m ecstatic to hear it.” Peter leans backward in the water, spreads his arms. Their circular cove is just far enough across for him to lie in lengthwise. He floats on his back and looks up at the rock ceiling curving overhead.

“How are you doing that?” Juno asks. He tries to mimic Peter’s position, but only ends up dipping his chin in the water before pushing back to his feet.

“Would you like me to show you?”

He keeps his hands gentle on Juno’s back. There is trust in this, of course; Juno is afraid, as little as he’d ever admit it, and Peter is teaching him to bare his body to the thing he fears.

But there is something else, too.

Something he sees in the shine of moonlight off Juno’s wet skin. Juno’s eye is closed. His shoulders are relaxed. His hands are loose, palm-up and fingers in a gentle curl.

Peter runs his hand across Juno’s chest. He spreads the water there, where it had been gathering into pools. Juno shivers. His eye opens, wide as the moon.

He reaches up, and when his wrists are crossed behind Nureyev’s neck his legs sink back below the surface of the water.

Peter reaches down, hooks his arms under Juno’s thighs, and lifts him up.

Juno’s legs are wrapped around Peter’s hips. He grinds forward, pulls himself closer, gasps against Peter’s mouth. He smells like himself, but he tastes like seawater when they kiss.

Peter takes a long step forward until Juno’s back hits rock.

“Please, please, _please,”_ Juno whispers into the space above Nureyev’s collarbone. Peter tightens his grip; Juno gasps as fingers dig into the flesh of his thighs.

The sound of water against rock flares up, louder and louder. Juno shudders, pressed tight between ancient stone and Peter’s body. Peter chases the taste of salt down Juno’s neck.

Peter can almost feel the light of the moon shining on his back. Its reflection on the water, a twin in all but substance, surrounds Juno in a halo as he moves against Peter, rhythmic like the tide.

 

—

 

Juno picks the lock this time.

He claims it’s like riding a hoverbike—once you learn as a kid, you never really lose it. The door is old, but not quite as old as the building itself. The dust on this asteroid hasn’t had time to encrust itself so deeply it can’t be opened, at any rate. Juno has to give a hearty kick when the lock jiggles loose, but finally the door swings inward to a wide, dark space.

“So what did you bring me all the way out to some old warehouse to see?” Juno asks as they walk inside. Peter clicks on a flashlight and leads him up a narrow flight of stairs.

“This is hardly a warehouse, Juno,” he says. “It’s a lighthouse.”

“Uh, Nureyev,” Juno laughs, “you sure you didn’t breathe in too much asteroid dust? I don’t see an ocean around here.”

In answer, Peter pushes open a final door.

The top floor is nothing like the dark, heavy metal box they walked into. Rather, it is a semi-circular glass dome. Grey-white rocks float nearby outside, motionless like snowdrifts. The room is full of nothing but the strange quality of light outer space provides: in the middle of a void blacker than possibility, the innumerable studding of stars keeps everything visible.

“Once upon a time, the Beacon was indispensable for travel past the Kuiper belt,” he explains. Juno’s head is tilted back, staring straight up into a darkness Peter always feels like he’s about to fall right into. “It sent out signals and provided communication guiding vessels past asteroids such as this one. It fell out of use when ships’ sensors became accurate enough to make the journey unaided, but lucky for us, they never demolished it.”

The observation floor was built to hold a staff of at least a dozen. Under close examination, one can still see lines crossing the floor where cubicles were set up. They’re long gone, now, just like the Beacon’s usefulness, but that leaves more room for Peter and Juno to spread sleeping bags.

They watch lights in the distance blink in and out of visibility. Any streak of white might be a shooting star and might be a ship slipping into lightspeed. That’s part of the joy, guessing.

“There,” Peter points over to the right. They’ve made a game of it.

“Not a fair fight for a guy with one eye,” Juno complains, as if he isn’t eight points ahead of Peter. One eye, yes, but still a sharper one than Nureyev has ever had in his head.

Peter rolls over to face Juno. Juno doesn’t acknowledge him for a moment apart from raising one eyebrow.

“Giving up?” he finally asks.

“Mhm,” Peter agrees. He reaches out to caress Juno’s jaw; it’s prickly with the dark scruff he can never seem to get rid of entirely.

Juno rolls over too. They’re face to face, now, bodies curving like empty parentheses.

“So I win?” He grins his favorite grin to use when he’s being a brat. Peter pushes himself up and leans over him, hands flat on the smooth fabric of Juno’s sleeping bag at either side of his head.

“You win.” Peter lets his head fall forward until his forehead touches Juno’s.

They lie like that, just breathing.

Juno shivers.

“Everything alright, Juno?” Peter pulls back enough to look him in the eye, which he rolls.

“There’s just no heating in this damn place,” he grumps. He pulls at the collar of his coat, obviously colder than he wants to let on.

“Ah, now that’s something I can fix. Come on,” he swats gently at Juno’s shoulder. “Get up.”

“What are you doing?” Juno tucks his hands inside his coat as he watches Nureyev.

Peter leans back on his heels, surveying his handiwork. Their two sleeping bags are turned so both zippers face inward, opened and re-zipped into one pouch just big enough for two. Peter takes off his shoes and slips inside.

“If you’d rather freeze out there, be my guest.” He puts his chin in his hands and gazes up at Juno invitingly. “But I myself am quite cozy in here.”

Juno smiles. He _smiles,_ then sheds his coat and eagerly climbs in beside Peter.

There is nothing urgent in the way they hold each other. It’s warm inside their bubble of nylon—and dark. He can’t see Juno clearly, but he can feel him more acutely than ever.

Peter pulls Juno closer until his muscles stop their small shivers, breathing slow and even.

They have all the time in the world on this lonesome asteroid. No one is looking for them here—for once, neither one has a price on his head, neither has pressing business or a clock ticking down to some inevitable tragedy. Just this, just the silence of space and a universe waiting, poised, for two lovers to leap down the rabbit hole and never come out again.

Peter feels Juno’s lips on his forehead as he drifts into sleep. He whispers back his name, _“Juno,”_ soft and adoring and certain of the bright morning to come.

 

—

Here is a final fact: Peter Nureyev’s plans usually work out. Usually.

**Author's Note:**

> Here I am, having written yet another fic that takes place almost entirely in Nureyev's head. I don't have a problem. Shut up.
> 
> As always, come yell at me on tumblr @eternalgirlscout

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] call me a fool if you like by howlikeagod](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15899847) by [rowanreads (austeyre)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/austeyre/pseuds/rowanreads)




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